We are live in Houston, Texans at the iHeart Radio building, and we
didn't get out of sleep last night, but we did have a lot of
fun and high fives and labs and mayor humps with Kevin Turner, fan,
Mike Siroy, Danny Bayless. We had J. J. Jackson back in
Dallas making sure that we don't get off bumped off the air, anything crazy
like that. We're in a conference room in an iHeart building and I purposely
did not where my Rangers at any boldly did wear his Rangers hat. Why
boldly one outfit? Yeah, well, you brought one suit on this trip.
You could have worn suit. That didn't mean your cows suit much.
I suppose we'll get into You could have worn the black suit. Yeah,
I was been a little coffee, I guess right. Yeah, it's a
little dirty too. After our Alamo Draft House session, I think that's a
couple of weeks back and we did the commercial for them. Yes, oh
I had to wear the suit. Actually dirty. I thought you meant like
dirty. Uh yeah, you have a range your cap on. You don't
want to represented this morning. I sweat through mine yesterday. Yeah, look
at us Houston, this is weird three boys in Houston. It is weird
and it's awesome. And yesterday at this time, we didn't know we were
doing this. It was kind of wild too, like this. Sure,
it was a long day for a lot of reasons, and just I kind
of was just thinking about that on the drive in from our hotel room,
motel, motel and going, man, it was twenty four hours ago when
you know, we decided to try to do this. It was like a
three minute drive though, that's when you were thinking about it. It's just
that little Yeah, I didn't want to talk too much. We both appreciate
that. It want to be a morning small talk guy. We got trapped
in it in a lobby and I just walked away. I think I'm a
little friendlier at five point thirty in the morning than most. Danny was trying
to take part in a big discussion on we need more Cowboys versus Texans.
You know in the regular season. Are there some things that Roger Goodell in
the NFL can do to make that happen and make that game a little more
special with the guy at the hotel at the extended stay, Yeah, yeah,
an annual game he wanted he had it down in Austin. Yeah,
kr, I did not summarily dismiss that conversation as I normally maybe would,
but I'm in a damn good mood today, so yes of course I told
him that it's probably not a bad idea to blow up the NFC. While
me and Mikey were grabbing as many muffins as violating, I was reaching past
the one muffin zigne while Danny pulled a diversion out. I had a backpack
full of muffins. That's eventine work. You know, breakfast is milk,
chocolate cashoes from BUCkies. Yeah. Yeah, it was a nice purchase,
though, it was a great purchase. It was good. Yeah. So
yesterday, at this time, I remember Mikey said something like, you know
what, I think I have an idea and we'll do it at six point
thirty just for I mean almost have to just had an idea. I figured,
even if something to discuss, like the idea of at six thirty am
saying why not go on this sports adventure. I want to give you credit
though, because I think in hindsight it was somewhat of whether you realize that
or not, at the time, it was somewhat of a power move,
because you could have had that idea of, hey, why don't we just
see if we can get a car and drive to Houston and we'll find tickets
and let's just find you know, some slap d hotel somewhere and just go
to the game and be there. You know, I think if you present
that idea to somebody off the air, it's early. Nobody wants to deal
with any big task. It's a Monday, you know, they might just
go yeah, but I mean but no, no, no. But like
if you if you brought that up to bosses, they might just think,
yeah, yeah, maybe next year we'll do that. But when you,
when you make the bold choice to talk about it on the air and kind
of spring it on us, do we start thinking, man, that's not
a bad idea. It kind of puts a little bit of uh, unexpected
pressure on those in power to make those decisions to where once you get the
listeners on board, you know at least this is what they want. Yeah,
it makes it really difficult for them to say no or just dismiss it
because they're tired. And I'll be damned if Zach didn't jump on board immediately
we called him cold called him at home, which another power move. It's
a terrifying call to receipt, but he knows we're on air. I don't
know if it's a power move as much as irresponsible. It's okay, but
okay, subconsciously it's a power move. It may not be something that you're
thinking, all right, I'm gonna muscle this guy into get us to Houston
today. It's just passive aggressive all because it's Yeah, he never sleeps Beat.
He told me yesterday that it's by far his favorite show on the Yeah.
And then Ben's ways talking about because I don't know, and then I'll
be damned Ben doesn't come through. It gets us a freaking big old Ford
expedition. That's one things probably before Goton give me one second because to your
first point. Years ago, when the Cowboys played the UH Packers in the
does Catch game, I remember I have a text he that was some friends
and it was my buddy Joel, who you guys know, and I think
it was Wednesday of that week and Joel was like, man, I just
looked up tickets to you know, Lambeau and it's not as much as I
thought, you know, just kind of passively said that, and then another
text, you know, minutes later said say, everyone want to go to
Lambo, and it was sort of like, l haha, lol, that
would be awesome. And then you wait about five minutes and you're like,
yeah, I want to go. And I think we all with a lot
of opportunities, you know, dismiss them as oh, that's that would be
great. Then we actually think about it. It's not the end of the
damn world, you know. And that was just to go to a game,
you know. That wasn't the logistics required for what we're doing today.
And my heart being cool and sending us down here and helping out and everything.
But I think before that, I like, I, had I not
done that, I don't know if we would have even really considered I would
have considered this being something that's viable because we did it and it was like,
you know what, that was only a few days notice and we did
it, and it's not impossible. It's nothing. Impossible is nothing, you
know, I don't understand what that means. No, it's the sign that
they rolled out on the field. That's what I thought you were referencing.
Loose without faith, nothing is possible, but with it, everything is possible.
Sort of, two wives and girlfriends unfold a very long inspirational arranger message
and got a smattering of applause, and then they just kind of set the
banner down on the ground and went back to frenching hot baseball husbands and reverencing
like after the ALCS, you know, trophy presentation, Yeah, you know,
after after the team all huddles up and jumps around and then they put
them on TV and give a few speeches. A couple of wives and girlfriends
six nine sign and we could we could even start there. Hang on real
quick. I want to go back to what you were saying as far as
the inspiration to do this. I think that's an interesting thought because I think,
as you know, maybe not so much to to in Kevin's case,
but I know in mine and maybe to yours. To a certain degree,
you get a little bit older, you start thinking more, you're more routine
based, you start thinking about things with I don't know, a more measured
thought process, and you're not so prone to jumping on an impulsive idea or
an impulsive decision or a thought. You just kind of like, that's gonna
kind of throw off the balance of my world a little bit. But doing
that, having that thing come together yesterday, having the idea to do it,
talking about it, and then actually really considering it, and then getting
a little momentum with our teammates, with our bosses, our teammates to kind
of it becomes kind of viral, where like the excitement is infectious a little
bit, and people are like, you know what, that's that's okay,
what can I do to help this? And the next thing you know,
you're here and you look back and realize that wasn't that difficult And it was
pretty freaking cheap. Yeah, okay. So most people might think, oh,
you know, I could never go to an American League championship game.
That just sounds so expensive. I don't know if I'm pulling back the curtain
here too much. But for three blokes like us that were able to get,
I don't know, those seats weren't terrible. No, we were,
I mean those I liked where we sat at the upper but dude, the
sight lines were great fun and we got but to Houston and a hotel overnight
and we got I mean, dude, it was around five hundred bars for
everything tickets and hotel rooms, three separate hotel rooms. We did this on
the cheap for sure, because look, radio stations are not you know,
they're not so prone to spending a lot of money. We're not Silicon Valley,
no. But it was a lot less expensive than most people would think.
And it was just a matter of getting a few people on our side
and pitching in a little bit and the next thing you know, we're in
there freaking going nuts. The Ford expedition from prosper Forward huge get up there,
so we didn't have to find anything the question marks of the station vehicle.
And I saw a couple comments from listeners and things like that, and
one guy just said, you know, I'm going to trade in my car
today, Ford Gap, but I'm gonna trade and like, there you go.
Worth it for prosper Ford. I hope you know one guy does business.
But because of this, but like assuming our bosses, I gets reimbursed
for everything. I mean, I think we made this all happen under seven
hundred bucks total. Yeah, for the three of us. And we met
listeners and had people on social media telling us, you guys were my inspiration.
I bought tickets at eight thirty am yesterday morning, or I bought tickets
at lunch break at work yesterday and decided to do it. It's just that
was awesome. I mean when we were on the road and a guy who
was a trucker rolled his window down and honked at us and was like,
took a picture of us, but he was like, we love you guys.
I was like, we're doing something good here. Put your head in
the driver's lap. And I never feed this this sound crazy because I did
it. I wish we could thank you the driver appreciate practice. If we
could take a million or all millions of our listeners with us at the game,
that would have been great. That's the ideal thing, is every single
one of them. But I do believe that if we can in some form
bring listener with us on the journey for a minute, even though like you
know, we're the radio guys. You got to go kick ass at the
game last night. I got I get that, but there's some element and
there's people like they're sending messages and there was like, oh, I'm so
happy you guys made it, and that made me feel good, Like why
why would you care if we were there or not? And people did.
I think it was because of the organic, you know, nature of how
it all happened and how kind of flying by the seat of our pants that
this whole operation. Yeah, totally. I don't know. On a personal
level, like I was saying, you get a little bit older and you
start thinking things, you're just kind of setting your ways, and it just
reminded me that it's really not that difficult to just just say f it and
take a chance and just do something. Even even though it's a four hour
drive to Houston. It's so close that tickets were pretty easy to get.
You know, you can get a hotel in any city. It's not that
difficult. But it's nice every once in a while just to say, you
know what, let's just try Yes, let's do it. Yes, say
yes, at least say you know what, I think we might be able
to do that, and then follow up a little bit well much like no.
It was cool, man, It was really Thanksgiving. The gravy set
it off. It was the prosper forward offer that really kind of set this
thing, and to go when we're like, you're serious, they're gonna let
us borrow a car vehicle a car was seven miles on it. Yeah,
a vehicle. And then I got there and I'm like, oh oh,
and this thing is, like I said yesterday, one of the most beautiful
cars. Right. Yeah, we don't belong even riding in that car,
much less being tossed the keys to it. Yeah, and I wonder,
you know, so Ben's wife, Ben Rodgers of the Ben skinch you of
course tend to too. Had I agreed to give us a car that was
a flimsy but a yes, I think we got from her. It did
feel flimsy. It's very sweet. He was saying, Oh, yeah,
I'm she's been trained over twenty years to know when to play radio with how
Benn calls her, sure you can have my car morning show as she rolls
her eyes and he getting yes, I'm going anywhere near that place. Yeah,
but also likes his phone's blowing up the second you guys are a Frankel
spot. Yeah, yeah, exactly before the Frankel spot ended, right,
And clearly the whole show is going to be like a lot about some of
the things from the game and all kinds of stuff because the stinking Texas Rangers
are going with the World Series and that sounds crazy. But it's happening again
and it's awesome and we're gonna have a big ride. You can call and
text in two and four eight when seven seven, eight, seven, one,
nine seven to one, all morning long. At eight thirty, we're
gonna do kind of a subscriber edition of the Dingus Morning News where if you
want to call in, or you have questions about our trip, or questions
about some things in the game, or if you made the trip, if
you made the trip, you know whatever, if you get something eight thirty
five, we'll kind of do that. Take your calls and text and all
that stuff. We'll be taking your text all morning long. One thing I
was thinking about this last night that I do kind of want to say this
is not, and never was intended to be a sports station. And I
know we haven't talked about that in months when we felt like we needed to
say it a lot. When the station launched, I think we were kind
of going out of our way to say this is not a sports station in
our town. Though sports is a part of everything. We all know that,
and we're all, you know, fans of sports or whatever. We're
talking a little bit of sports. But I think I really enjoyed the way
like listening even on the ride down, how all the shows like handled talking
about like The Rangers. It's all very casual and feeling based and very fun
and for us for them to let us do something like this, whether it's
this or whether it was someone putting something together to let us go to the
sphere, you know whatever. I'm trying to think of that next were other
experiences. I do think that's what the station should be about. And it's
early. We all know we're in year one of our station, right,
and so but the more stuff like this we can do. And again props
to Zach, our program director, for being like, yeah, let's go
and take it, you know, but also like Mike's idea and all of
our right, just kind of like, let's not just like it's a lawn
chair Friday. It's the listeners are in on it too. It's all that
stuff. There's just like, let's just get as weird as we can get
at all times. Please more of that because that makes yesterday fun. Like
yesterday, doing yesterday's show, I even had like a nervous energy that was
all based in good faith. And maybe it was just the fact that the
Rangers were in Game seven last night. Yeah, but you know, it
was like a big propeller to more. Let's get more and more and more.
It was so fun, it seems I don't know if surreal is the
right way to describe it, but it's so unexpected. And I think you
mentioned it to somebody last night, maybe it was a fellow Ranger fan at
the stadium, that it just doesn't feel real yet. And I think that
if you are a fan of the Astros, for example, you kind of
expect to be in the World Series this season, right, you won it
last year. There's an expectation that you you were not surprised at all.
If the Astros won last night and they go on to the World Series,
no surprise is there at all. This wasn't supposed to happen for this team
until maybe next year or the year after, right, Yeah. So the
fact that it is so at the time and over the season and the way
the season win and the way it ended, this to me feels very unexpected.
So I don't know if that adds to I think it just adds an
element of surprise where it just hasn't really sunk in yet that we're going back
after eleven years of not going, you know, of not winning a pennant.
It just hasn't sunk in for me at one hundred percent. That sort
of hit me during the game there because because of the Whirl win, the
yesterday was for us with the travel and everything, and then oh my god,
we're at the game. Oh my god, and then they have a
lead. It almost took me the second or third inning when I was like,
I mean we could we could be watching this team go to the World
Series. I know, as dumb as that is, I mean, that's
what we're there for. There's something about watching on TV that the routine of
it all, and you know, you're used to the site lines and just
the tension that goes along with that, but being there and then as the
lead got bigger and bigger, you know, and then we're hesitant to even
talk about it. Yeah, but like we're three innings away from going to
the World Series. Nothing else, not a win, not just a regular
win, nothing like that. I mean, this is we're on that short
list of biggest wins in franchise history, a real short list when you factor
in the Astros dominance and being on the road and the picture you're going against.
I don't know, it just felt I felt like out of body almost
watching it, like this is wild that the way that we comported ourselves during
the game was reflective of of what you just described, because at no point
did anybody like really near us or definitely not us at any point, no
matter how big the lead was, was it ever like f Yeah, it
was very oh my god, dude, celebrations like our celebrations were, you
know, kind of like little quiet fist bumps or maybe two oh my god,
you know, very cool and chill about the whole thing. Because if
we'd sit down and go, all right, keep going. We need more,
yeah, I tend to to. I'm like, I'd feel a little
better if we were twelve to two. Yeah, really, you know,
we need more insurance. And no greed in that at all. It's just
the pure fact that we know what our bullpen is capable of doing on the
high end and the low end. Yeah, And I will say this.
I know it's been three four years since I worked in what would be classified
as all sports or the reason I left the last station I was at in
twenty nineteen was because there were some mandates put in place that were talking more
sports and take all calls and do all sports, and they didn't want anything
lifestyle based, and it sucked the fun out of my life. And I'm
getting where I didn't even enjoy watching sports anymore. And then now once I
got out of that, and that was kind of a temporary mandate anyways,
But once I moved over to I Heearten was the Eagle. For a while,
I was still doing a talk show like this, but been in skinning
now on this show, like, I've enjoyed sports so much more because it's
not my life. It's not something that we had to have to do,
you know. Obviously the Rangers are and the Cowboys and Mavericks and Star everything.
It's all part of the fabric of the city. But man, I've
had so much more fun watching sports the last four years when it hasn't been
technically your job. I agree, and I think it. I think it's
probably a lot more a burger probably tastes a lot more delicious, and you
enjoy it more when you're not the dude that killed the cow, you know,
and when you're seriously and when you were working in that business where it's
when the expectation is to spend more time breaking down deeper stuff about the games.
And I look, I'm fascinated by that stuff, maybe just as much
as the next guy. I think it's really interesting. But just when it's
the expectation is that's what your touchstone is for your show's identity or the station's
identity, it just becomes a little it's hard to enjoy it. I've lost
my care to see live sports. I don't like going to games because you
spend twenty two years where that is the focus, and it's like, hey,
you guys veered too much off the sports path. Here. We need
to get back on less stuff about your dumb life and let's talk more about
sports. And we went through that. Even though our former station was you
know, somewhat balanced and allowed us to do some personal stuff, it's still
it's called the name sports is in the name of the station, So there
is that expectation that you have to kind of keep going back to that where
I think I love the freedom that we have we talk about sports because it
is the most important thing in our worlds. Yeah, for that given day
or weekend or whatever. And I think I think that's maybe how most people
operate yeah, yeah, and it's we if you listen to the subtleties of
the differences too, Like I think we have fun with all this like a
less technical base, you know, unless like you said, when I'd watch
sports, I would have notes pages, you know, for every show,
you know, like specifics and this inning, this happened in this And we
can hit on any and all of that stuff if if it fits, you
know, if we want to. But I think more of the overarching look
at the whole thing, Like you said, going to a live game.
It's hard to go to a live game and then go in the next day
and really break down what happened, you know, because you just see it
differently. You don't watch it, and you see a lot closer when you're
on TV watching on TV as far as the nuance of little things and little
moments that you might miss. But when you're at the game like we were
last night here down in Houston, you see the big picture and you get
to kind of soak up the vibe of it and tell people that story,
which is I think more fun. I agree, then break down this,
this, this, and this, Well, you're kind of where we were
last night. Our seats were in I would say, what about almost to
the down the right field line, okay, our first base line near near
the between fal pole and first base, okay, And you're you're stuck in
that one position. You know, you're stuck in those seats for the majority
of the game. There's not replay going on in that stadium, not like
it. You're limited to one vantage point on what you can see anyway,
And I was commenting with Mikey last night, It's like, oh my god,
you can't see the local cation of the pitches, but the speed of
the pitches are so evident, it's so apparent. How you know what you
can tell if it's a curveball or a change up as opposed to a fastball,
because it is night and day from that angle, you know, from
that kind of a lateral angle. Whereas, I get it why these guys
are fooled. I get it why these guys from their vantage point seeing it
coming right at them, it looks like the same speed, but obviously it's
not. I know, this is baseball pitching whatever, one oh one.
But just having that perspective, that's one thing that I can comment on.
But as far as anything else, really, that happened in the game that
you would see by watching the game on TV. You're kind of limited.
I don't have any notes for today. Well, I mean I have a
few things based off memory. And then it's also like the go double check
and say what happened there, because there are some big question marks that happened
in that game, like early in that game. We'll get into that a
little bit probably I then we do that. Next, Let's let's go aheit
a break. Mike's got a huge low tie in her live spot coming up
what he's been talking about, and also is our prosper for it SUV gonna
get towed all next to ninety seven won the Freak